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    The Duke Comes Home

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    Ever since the cruel death of her beloved brother, David at the Battle of Waterloo, Lady Ilina Bury’s father, the fifth Duke of Tetbury, has taken out his grief on her and now he too has died and his will reiterates his contempt of her. He leaves the beautiful nothing but the extremely valuable collection of jewels that had been given to his ancestor, the second Duke of Tetbury, by the Nizam of Hyderabad. The trouble is that, although legendary, these jewels are also almost certainly mythical and Ilina and David have been searching Tetbury Abbey for them for years without any success.All but destitute she dreads the arrival of her father’s heir and rather than be a burden, she decides to pretend that she is a paid employee of the poverty-stricken estate.And when the handsome new Duke finally does arrive from the Far East, he is visibly disappointed by what he sees, but worse still he says that he intends to abandon the estate, all its loyal staff and close up The Abbey for ever.He very quickly sees through Ilina’s disguise and then she shows the Duke round the dilapidated house and estate and regales him with the family’s illustrious history over many centuries.Although she despises him, she uses all her charms to persuade the Duke to stay and do his duty for his distinguished and aristocratic family. And, as little by little he yields, so Ilina’s heart slowly opens to love.
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  • Warned by a Ghost - cover

    Warned by a Ghost

    Barbara Cartland

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    The lovely young orphan Sedela Craven is very excited to hear that the Marquis of Windlesham is returning home from active service in the Duke of Wellington’s Army in France at the end of the long war against Napoleon Bonaparte.
     
    He, however, lingers on in London with his beautiful lover Lady Esther Hasting, an exquisite yet unscrupulous woman who is unfaithful to him while striving to ensnare him into marriage for his riches and his celebrated title.
     
    Informed of this by her Nanny, Sedela dresses up as the Windles’s family ghost, Lady Constance, who appears as a warning whenever the family is in danger.
     
    Entering the Marquis’s bedroom at midnight through a secret passage she warns him that he is in grave peril from a woman who is unfaithful to him with a man he trusts as his friend.
     
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    It is only back at his estate preparing with Sedela for a lavish party for his family and friends that he begins to realise what his heart truly desires and it is Sedela.
     
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    Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society. Anton Hur's translation skilfully captures the way Chung's prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous.
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    Easy to be a God

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  • Running Away to Love - cover

    Running Away to Love

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    For beautiful young Ivana her stepfather Keith Waring is no replacement for her much-missed father, the Honourable Hugo Sherard, who was killed in Spain fighting against Napoleon Bonaparte.
     
    Her stepfather is a spendthrift and he has gambled away virtually everything the family owns.
     
    Ivana’s hatred for her stepfather is doubled when, to her utter horror, she overhears him offering her as a ‘kept woman’ to the equally despised Lord Hanford for over five thousand pounds!
     
    Ivana runs away with her old Nanny acting as her chaperone and companion and applies for work through a Domestic Agency, where she is invited to apply for a post using her flawless Parisian French for the Earl of Lorimer, who is working in the War Office.
     
    Expecting a man to apply for the post, the imperious but handsome Earl is at first sceptical, but on realising that he knew her father, he soon warms to her, saying that he has a ‘difficult and dangerous mission for her!’
     
    Ivana is to become a spy, working undercover against Napoleon’s secret agents. And so her perilous adventures begin.
     
    Very soon she loses her heart – and at every turn she risks losing her life.
     
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  • The Wrong'un - cover

    The Wrong'un

    Catherine Evans

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    Meet the Newells, a big family of good lookers and hard grafters. From their sleepy working class backwater, the siblings break into Oxford academia, London's high life, the glossy world of magazine publishing and the stratospheric riches of New York's hedge funds. Then there's Paddy, the wrong'un in their midst, who prefers life's underbelly. As things fall apart around his sister Bea, is Paddy behind it all? And why does matriarch Edie turn a blind eye to her son's malevolence? Will she stand by and watch while he wrecks the lives of her other children? Just how much is she willing to sacrifice to protect her son? The book opens with Edie, now in her seventies, who looks back on her early married life with her husband, George, and their ever-growing brood. She loved having babies, but resented their growth and increasing independence. She recalls the horror and confusion surrounding the death of her toddler son, Timmy. Even though it happened forty years ago, she still blames her brother, his uncle, for falling asleep while he was supposed to be looking after the children. Now, her favourite son, Paddy, has just been released from prison for dangerous driving. She is good at making excuses for him. All her other children are successful, and have done extremely well in their chosen careers, but it becomes apparent that she begrudges her only daughter's success. Why does she resent her daughter so much? Paddy is malevolent, violent, bullying, cruel... Edie has never forgiven herself for giving him up to the care system before she married George. He has never fitted in with his siblings, and is the bad apple that can ruin the whole batch. The only person he has ever cared about is his stepfather, George, who saw only too clearly what Edie has always been blind to. Bea, the only daughter in the family, has grown up knowing her mother doesn't love her. She is a successful journalist, and adores her husband, David, and her stepchildren, but longs for a baby of her own. Then suddenly David dies. In the midst of her grief, her glamorous cleaning lady, Lorena, flaunts her pregnancy. She insists that the baby is David's, and is willing to take a DNA test to prove it. Welcome to the world of the Newells, where nothing is as it seems.
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